What is the meaning of thing?

I also think of the meaning of "thing" pretty much as a place holder--like "something". I do not give much weight to "thing"(ness) as an ontological reality. I said once on another thread (can't remember which) that an object is usually thought of as a holder of properties, for example, an apple has redness, roundness, taste, nutrition, weight, etc. etc.. We also assume, at least logically, that we can subtract all those properties from the apple and remain with only the apple's "thingness". But, of course, that has only logical meaning; it is experientially vacuous.

Ah ! Now I see your departure from my thesis.

Your "operator" is equivalent to a linguistic "agent" or "subject", in which language constitutes an ontological a priori. Or as Maturana said (in the reference I gave you a long time ago) "observation is always a verbal report". Or, to take Dennett's position, "self" is an agent amongst others as evoked by the grammar of language. And this is the view I have shared with JL Nobody over many years.

So it turns out that we differ in as much that you hold your "funcionality" as being epistemologically distinct from "grammaticality" whereas I, like Dennett and Marturana do not. The epistemological origin of language is "top down" (social to psychological) whereas that of "functionality" is "bottom up". Essentially you avoid the gestaltist levels of analysis insofar that discussions of "existence" are an epiphenomenon of language, but existence itself remains ineffable.

.....On reflection "functionality" is also normally "top-down" , but you reverse that by equating it to something like "mathematical functionality as a fundamental truth".

Fresco, and this is at the core of the difference between the philosophical and "mystical" study of life. The former is essentially "an epiphenomenon of language" while in the case of the latter "existence itself remains ineffable".

The problem is that you see language as a specific human trait emerging in the Social, while I am more generalist and do not look for any particular background...for you, only human beings operate with language, as they are the subjects from where language emerge...you believe in minds, while I see minds as software in the very self fabric of language...software producers emerging inside a yet bigger layer of software...and such that, I in turn, see language and language operators, everywhere, not even restricted to biological entity´s, or bounded by the obscure concept of "matter" itself...as I said in previous occasions, every variable is simultaneously subject and object, an operator of relations and fruit of them...I am the one that, bottom line sticks with language and language alone...self dynamic Systems of Information !
...plus, my position is not necessarily bottom-up, as you forget that I very much in my hard deterministic approach, dismiss time sequencing in my views and thus consequently being also an Holist on this regard...nevertheless, as I remember telling awhile ago either to you and Fido, we all are not that far away as it may seam... to conclude suffices to say that I am far of considering to already have a full picture in my mind on how this all glues together...it happens that in so far I very much had good reason in life to trust my intuition, I keep doing it...it goes as if I knew something before being fully able to put it orderly in to words, we all know that sensation...

...the disagreement we both have upon Truth very much is related with the old problem of Infinity versus Finity and further...while I think infinity only addresses, Dynamic, (Quantitative) thus subjected to a pattern sequencing repetitiveness which encapsulates its qualitative scope and depth to finite parameters, you seam to almost magically believe in a True boundless Infinity...(my IQ does n´t grab that much... )

(I apologise in advance for my English, given this reply is being build as I go without any review)
Best regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

It's an individuation stripped of characteristics that could identify it any further: A phenomenon that has had its information content reduced via the word representing it.

Or in reverse: The primal, ambiguous status of an entity, action, situation, artifact, event, matter, attribute, statement, etc., before it is further classified under the preceding categories and any additional sub-distinguishings.

Often, the "thing" is already known or has been cognized as to what it is, but "thing" is substituted for its concrete / narrower identity: "How could John do such a thing?" in place of "How could John piss all over Judy's sofa after she broke up with him?". Similar to the purpose of pronouns, minus officially being one.

If I were to peak a third approach, neither top down or bottom up, but simply à priori !...

I don´t think its just an half identification, you would need the full sequence of Code, the Universe itself, to get the correct identification on what it does beyond function..."operator" in turn states something very substantial and complete in it...actually there´s nothing to "things" but that, they operate...that´s what´s truly real in them...what they do, the algorithm which they are and the one in which they fit is irrelevant for the purpose of just being...nevertheless in general terms I still like your answer.

Jphil. A thing is a group of events that constitute an object, a more interesting question might be, when does a condition become a thing, if indeed it does.

Please clarify.

Albuquerque, Well all things, objects, are systems, generally more than one system. I think in process thinking they refer to it rather as events, but, I am not really up on process philosphy. Think about the weather, there are a good number of events occurring which go together to create a condition, we tend to call a tornado a thing but is it really, isn't it just a condition with a limited duration. The environment is a condition on which life depends, but its ever changing however slowly. So I suspect duration is one qualification for thing or object. That's the best I can do with it right now.

I take the opposite view and think of potentials as actuals. Every event, every phenomena, encapsulated in spacetime exists without any justification, just brut fact. Asking why it is or how it came to be only makes sense from a within time perspective. We search for the order of patterns as they unfold in our process biology because doing so is a survival trait, but the fact of the matter is that they are. I grant we can only know them from our embodied cognitive limits boundaries and thus we experience them within a limited domain, our domain. That said I don't know what our domain ultimately is. Nonetheless its not less legitimate. Any form of experience delusional or not is REAL. The question is not about what is real, as everything is real, but about what is pragmatically more valuable, specifically to us, and that of course is within our domain of operation and comprehension.

This is not Anti-Realism but quite on the opposite Hyper-Realism.

Albuquerque, Excellent, take me a bit of time to totlally digest that. That thought about an experienced being possibly less legitimate. That is one thing that one can count on, an experience might not agree with physical reality, but it is the true experience of said biology, so experience is true to its biology even ware the biology is impared.

Thing vs everything, touchy and feely:
Thing is E = hγ, because Maxwell didn’t tell us whether the electro – magnetic wave should travel in a circle or in a straight line. Perhaps in the eye of an ant, a circle with one meter radius looks like a straight line…And no one could be sure whether a straight line is the simplest pattern in cosmos or it should be a circle …
But that’s not everything, because there is something else: thing between thing.
Have a lovely day, guys. haha

htam, DUH!!!